GOLF : These Teen-agers Are Chips Off Old Country Club Blocks : Prep Player Quotes His Father: Golf Is Not a Kids’ Game

The tall, tanned young man--his arms too thin to fill out the gathered sleeve of his golf shirt--leaned heavily on his putter and scowled.

He had just made a 20-foot putt. And yet, what lay heaviest on his mind was the horrible tee shot and wretched chip to the green that had made the long putt necessary.

All of which brings us to the question: Are we having fun yet?

The tall, tanned young man is 17. Seventeen going on 35. He is a high school golfer. And in this game, kids are not allowed.

All around Beverly Koppe was green and spring and sun and . . . gloom.

Koppe, the co-coach of the Corona del Mar High School golf team, sat behind a Green River Country Club green during the CIF Southern Regional team golf championships and craned her neck in search of the happy golfer.

“I’m sure there’s someone around here with a smile on his face,” she said. “I just haven’t seen anyone smiling today.”

She looked a little longer, then recalled, “Jason Bittick. The boy from Esperanza. He has a good time out here. I just saw him clowning a few minutes ago. He had a towel on his head like he was an Arab.”

Though Koppe may have gotten a chuckle from Bittick’s headdress, that was not intended.

Bittick wears the towel to isolate himself. To “go into a little box where people can’t bug me.”

Welcome to high school golf.

Welcome to dollar-a-minute lessons and kids on expense accounts. Welcome to slacks and sweater vests, to crew cuts and etiquette.

They are teen-agers playing a grown-ups’ game. Countless professional athletes have said you must keep that little kid within you to be successful. To a golfer, that little being must be exorcised as soon as possible.

“My father tells me, ‘You’re 18, but when you play, you have to be 40 years old,’ ” Bittick said. “This isn’t a kid’s game.”

As Bittick explained, golf is a game of expected disappointment. The successful player is the one who best handles frustration.

“I remember hearing Ben Hogan say he could only hit two perfect golf shots a round,” Bittick said. “The people who are successful at this game are the ones who deal best with bad shots.”

Thus, the game demands they act older, dress older, be older. To succumb to emotion--happy or sad--is to lose control.

“It’s the only sport I know that players are expected to be gentlemen,” said Harlan Chambers, Dana Hills coach. “Other athletes have a release. Football players can hit someone, basketball players can run, but golfers? They have to be contained and composed at all times. They have to keep everything inside of them. That’s a lot of pressure building up.”

Dean Crowley, CIF Southern Section administrator, estimates that 200 high schools have golf programs. Some of California’s strongest programs are found in Orange County. Esperanza placed second at the regional championship, El Dorado was third.

The majority of players have 10 years of experience by the time they are seniors. Their parents--especially their fathers--are usually good golfers, and they’ve grown up around golf courses, living the country club life.

“It’s like a subculture unto itself,” said Craig Thornburg, Mater Dei coach. “It’s a different way of life. They spend a majority of their time at the club. It’s never any problem getting these kids to play. It’s practically their way of life.”

Golf Humor:

You’re on the course and you see lightning. What do you do?

Stick up a 1-iron.

Why?

Even God can’t hit a 1-iron.

Lessons with a qualified professional average about $30 for 30 minutes.

If you’re a top player like Bittick or John Wardrup of Corona del Mar, you also fly around the United States to play in junior tournaments.

Wardrup has played tournaments in North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Nevada. All of the monetary support has come from his father, Larry.

“Someone asked me who sponsors my kid,” Larry said. “I said, ‘I do.’ He practices every day. I couldn’t even estimate the hours. It’s just every free moment he has.

“It’s what he wants. It can run into a lot of money, but it keeps him out of trouble, teaches him discipline and gives him a good work ethic.”

It also teaches them how to dress.

Conservative. Kids wear slacks, not pants. They wear sweater vests in 90-degree weather. The lesson is simple. Many times in golf, it is as important to look good as it is to play well.

“Dress right, feel right, play right,” Bittick recites. “Arnold Palmer said that and I believe it. I feel better when I look right. Golf is such a mental game, that the better, more comfortable you feel, the better you’re going to play.”

It also sits well with local country clubs, which are leery of having young golfers on their courses.

“Probably the hardest thing a golf coach has to do is get a golf course,” Chambers said. “A lot of the clubs are scared that the kids aren’t going to dress right or act right. Or that they’re going to rip up their courses.”

Dressing right these days means looking like your dad.

Slacks, spikes and sweaters. The only thing that separates them from their fathers in appearance is a few whiskers and a generous helping of styling mousse.

This wasn’t always the case. Herb Wilson, Corona del Mar co-coach, recalls that in the 1960s kids weren’t so respectful of golfing tradition.

“They had the long hair and dressed any way they wanted,” he said. “Country clubs really came to hate kids for a while because they didn’t respect their ways. That’s changed. These kids today know what the country club is about and act the way they’re supposed to.”